Broadband News

No gaming with Xbox One if your broadband breaks

The big console war is building up and we now know that the Sony PS4 will
retail for £349 in the UK and the Xbox One will sell for £429. A good chunk of
the difference in price being down to the inclusion of the kinect camera for
the Xbox One, where as motion sensing is an add-on for the PS4.

The Sony PS4 launch made a lot of noise about the ability to share video
from a game and the online abilities of the console and to a great extent the
same applies to the Xbox One, where the devices diverge is how connected to
your broadband connection they both need to be.

The XBox
One appears to have a requirement that even if you are playing an off-line
game that the console needs to see the Xbox Live service every 24 hours, or
just one hour if you signed on at another console that has subsequently gone
offline. This means that if you suffer a broadband outage lasting more than a
day the Xbox One will stop playing games.

The speed of broadband connection for an Xbox One that is recommended for an
optimal experience is 1.5 Mbps, but no mention of how symmetric this needs to
be. We suspect that for many of the eye candy features in the presentations
that a connection of much faster speeds is needed, it would be interesting to
see an Xbox One put through its paces on a slow broadband connection alongside
one that is more in line with the UK average. The ultimate experience of
uploading video of gameplay while playing, seamless switching between user
profiles and libraries of games is going to be a driver for take-up of super
fast broadband services.

Comments

Kinetic camera? Andrew I know you sometimes struggle with spelling on the site and I appreciate that you're clearly using a spell checker of some kind, but...

Kushan

over 4 years ago

After seeing the reaction from the Sony E3 reveal I am surprised at seeing how much people are cheering about things staying the same.

Although looking what MS and EA et al were proposing it is at least some sanity from Sony.

undecidedadrian

over 4 years ago

Actually no spell checker today, just my brain has kinectic stuck in it for some reason.

andrew

over 4 years ago

With the whole PRISM thing recently, I wonder why they'd want this...

otester

over 4 years ago

the xbox one is a terrible product, it seems microsoft are siding too much with media companies and getting arrogant with thier policies, I have seen so much bad press for it, yet at the same time uk retailers are reporting record pre orders, crazy. also how much are we subsidising the americans, 499usd vs 429gbp?

chrysalis

over 4 years ago

@Chrysalis Slightly less when you remember US pricing is always excluding sales tax. So more like $550 versus £429

andrew

over 4 years ago

Hopefully this will cause PC sales to increase instead of console sales...

MrTAToad2

over 4 years ago

@andrew - Depends on where you are buying... Georgia has only 6-7% sales tax. Delaware, Alaska, Oregon, Montana and New Hampshire has none at all. It is ALWAYS cheaper to buy electronics in the USA. Do a little comparison on the iPad mini... you will be really surprised.

Your example of $550 is still £351.06 and that includes your sales tax of just over 10%. The most I can see being charged on tax is 11.752% in Arizona. The amount of states with max tax over 10% is only 7.

vicdupreez

over 4 years ago

This I will say again... We are getting screwed 7 ways from Sunday in the UK. EVERYTHING is more expensive that in the US and we are getting paid WAY less for our trouble...

Oh and btw... I do not play games and have never owned a console...

vicdupreez

over 4 years ago

You should really compare all before tax. So, £428 - the tax is £357.50. That's $557.70. How much of that extra $58.70 can be ascribed to shipping? And I don't play consoles either - hate those pads and never really got on with Kinect.

ian72

over 4 years ago

And I guess the other factor is that American companies tend to try and account for fluctuations in currency exchange so that they don't keep changing prices.

ian72

over 4 years ago

The shipping is a non starter... It is cheaper to ship to the UK from China than to ship to the USA, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they do ship direct. Does not make any sense any other way what with the different plug in the box and all... The unknown to me that may play a role is import tax, which points again to us being screwed by the UK government... The more I think about it, the less welcome I feel in the UK... Maybe I should take the hint...

vicdupreez

over 4 years ago

Well if you don't like the prospect of having a national health system, social security or a pension when you retire then you can go to the USA.

But you just pray that you don't get sick, get made unemployed on a whim and don't expect any sort of income when you retire and you need to get a job a walmart to make ends meet.

undecidedadrian

over 4 years ago

I guess the XBox One is not for me then. It would be unusable and redundant for approximately 2 months in every year.

csimon

over 4 years ago

I think I'm one of the few who isn't overly bothered by this.

I use my xbox for gaming but most of it is on Live anyway. I probably use it more for media for which of course requires me to be online.

My xbox is always online. If my DSl dies, is it really the end of the world? If it just needs to check in once a day I could just connect using my mobile network. Problem solved, move on.

It is annoying when you go out shopping and have added up your total, get out a $10 bill and then have to go searching for another dollar bill.

In the last decade have found at least in middle America pricing is much closer to UK for tech kit than previously.

andrew

over 4 years ago

@undecidedadrian, I do not know how old you are, but I guarantee you that by the time I am ready to retire (bout 25 years from now), there will be no state pension, nor any kind of benefits left. The current system will not survive with the current levels of abuse. I have never accepted 1 penny's worth of handouts from the UK government, and I never will, out of principle. I have been out of work before also, and my wife got very angry with me for not signing on. I got off my backside and found a job instead...

vicdupreez

over 4 years ago

Anyway, that is what medical insurance is for :D. Costs about the same as national insurance...

vicdupreez

over 4 years ago

A proper off-line mode that works for everyone including overseas serving armed forces personnel isn't the only thing the PS4 offers over the XBone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwYUGtI6guY

Spectre_01

over 4 years ago

How SONY won the console battle...

http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/12/don-mattrick-xbox-360-offline/

Spectre_01

over 4 years ago

Also, SONY no region lock.

http://i.imgur.com/tvXzEGE.png

Spectre_01

over 4 years ago

Does anyone know where I can find a blank map like the ones referenced in Spectre_01's post?

vicdupreez

over 4 years ago

The Xbox one is almost blank, just use MSpaint to remove the little bits of green and your good to go.

Spectre_01

over 4 years ago

LOL. Was hoping for a higher quality copy :D. I will keep looking.

vicdupreez

over 4 years ago

newsflash they've done a u turn

BTfanboy

over 4 years ago

Our XBox not even turned on every day let alone connected to the internet daily. If we got XBox One it would probably be a heap of junk after 1 use due to the internet connection requirement